Speakers and Moderators
VADM Lyle Bien USN (Ret.)
Former Deputy Commander-in-Chief and Chief of Staff
U.S. Space Command
Lyle G. Bien, a native of South Dakota, is currently a defense industry consultant. He is a graduate of Augustana College and the National War College.
A Naval Flight Officer, he served aboard multiple aircraft carriers over 11 major deployments to the Pacific flying the F-4 Phantom and the F-14 Tomcat. He is a graduate of and former instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN).
He commanded an F-14 Fighter Squadron, 2 Carrier Airwings, a Carrier Battle Group and the Naval Space Command, Dahlgren, VA. From October 1990 to March 1991 he was the senior Navy striker planner for Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM. He was in command of the Nimitz Battle Group throughout her response to the Taiwan Missile Crisis in 1996.
He served on the Joint Staff, and was the Deputy Commander-in-Chief, United States Space Command, where he chaired the Senior Warfighter Forum (SWarF) that rendered the design that became the Wideband Gapfiller satellite program.
He has 5,500 flight hours in Navy fighter aircraft, 1300 carrier landings, and 225 combat missions. He is an Augustana College Distinguished Alumnus (1995) and was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 1997. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Augustana College and the Naval Postgraduate School Board of Advisors.
Vice Admiral Bien was employed by Teledesic LLC from 1999-2002 in charge of the Government Division. He has been a member of the MDA Graybeard Panel on National Missile Defense since its inception in 1999. He serves as a senior mentor to service Title X Wargames, multiple Exercises at U.S. Strategic Command, as well as the MDA Wargames, Schriever Series, Thor's Hammer at the NRO, and Simulations at the Joint National Integration Center at Schriever AFB. He works extensively in the related areas of Space-based Communications, C4ISR, and Global Missile Defense. He is a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, National Security Space Architect Board chartered to define the future of National Security Transformational Communications Architecture (TCA) and the U.S. Naval Space Panel on FORCEnet and naval space and communications. He was part of a yearlong Congressionally-directed study of the future of National Security Space Launch and in 2006 became a member of the US Strategic Command’s Strategic Advisory Group (SAG). Vice Admiral Bien lives on a cattle ranch in his native South Dakota and in San Diego, CA with Cathy, his wife of 34 years.
